


about whether one can delete divinity -

by anjalikaastras



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: POV Second Person, attempt for a darker take on alter arjuna, short fic for @givemequartzplz on twitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 13:44:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19975057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anjalikaastras/pseuds/anjalikaastras
Summary: we think we understand a god can be rationalised, explained away, in human behaviours and moods ; like how wild animals become domestic, but we forget: what we do is to look up at a mountain from faraway, and exclaim 'how short it is !'





	about whether one can delete divinity -

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated fic for @givemequartzplz on twitter ! thank you for giving me the idea

It is the little things you never see or know or  _ realise _ , like some twisted game of othello, where your opponent makes strange marks all around and you laugh as you work on your own little encampment, then you startle in realisation as it hits like a meteor: in two moves he will have won. It is the sweetness of a pitcher plant’s digestive syrup, enthralling to a fly until he falls in and slips.

Or maybe the realisation lurked in your subconscious all along, and you just never cared to acknowledge it, because you were  _ Fujimaru Ritsuka _ and you believed that love and care was enough to warm up even the coldest of hearts.

Ah, but you were working with humans all this while, weren’t you ? You were dealing with people who ultimately still craved to be loved, craved to love. You could understand them because they were, or had once been, human.

You never plumbed the depths of a god’s heart.

  
  


When is the first time you felt real fear because of him ?

He doesn’t resemble the Arjuna Alter you used to know now — his hair, most notably, is short and black, not messy and white. His skin isn’t ash-grey like Shiva’s, but of a shade and tone comparable to his Archer self’s. You’ve distanced him from the idea of the man who terrorised Chaldea in the place where the yugas cycled.

In retrospect, that wasn’t a good decision.

Masters like you always forget, don’t you ? That Mad Enhancement is never for show.

  
  


The first time...it was a regular foray for gems. You needed them to help another Servant, and because his power always made short work of any enemies, you brought him along. You’d already started to call him Kiritin by then, and your mental image of him was closer to a cat’s than anyone else. You confused gods with humans, confused their thoughts for your thoughts.

You committed the same mistake as most wild animal handlers do, on their first days. Once, there was an animal whisperer who thought an elephant desired to put his head in her lap, believed this was a gesture of affection from the hulking beast. She was wrong about half of that statement.

Elephants put their heads in the laps of people and then grind them out like a cigarette butt beneath a shoe heel. Signs of danger mistaken for tokens of love. He was something like them — just a little different, honestly.

Why do you think he pledged himself to you, Master ?

  
  


But you remember it, don’t you ? You remember that you were about to be struck by a wild blow from a cavalryman, desperately flinging himself at you so your Servants wouldn’t be able to keep up the fight against him and his soldiers. You remember that you tried to run, but his long strides gained too much ground on you.

You remember that something flung you away just in the nick of time, your bones screaming in protest, your flesh seared by something too hot behind it, and when you managed to turn to see it, you’d seen  _ him. _

Kiritin’s left hand was buried in the cavalryman’s shoulder up to the wrist, and he was covered in crimson. You saw it trace threads down his face, like some macabre pen marking out a scarlet story on the ink of his skin. A story in bloodshed, of bloodshed.

You saw his expression, too, and that terrifying detachment had looked like the face that Archer had struggled to keep hidden from you for years. You saw the crimson fall onto his lips, and saw him lick it up like it was no more than water. He looked like what he did — murder of another man — was nothing different from skipping rocks in a pond.

You thought of the demon Raktabija, and the goddess Kali, sprung from Durga, and you remembered the myths associated with blood-drinking. More than the sight he cut there, though, his clothes and his skin stained with blood, you remember the words he said.

“Anything that harms...Master...is evil.”

You remember the astras converging at the hand still buried in the pectoral, and you see raw fear blaze in the cavalryman’s eyes as he struggles to scream, but his mouth only hangs wide, his lips flapping, every beat of his heart causing more haemoglobin to pour from his wounds. You imagine a human begging for mercy from a god, and receiving none.

“So...I will destroy them all. Return to where you must return.”

Did that scare you ?

Not enough, I suppose. Not enough to make you fear him.

You had looked at a girl who held Yog-Sothoth’s power within that slender figure and you’d survived her, you thought. He could hardly be much different.

  
  


The next time he really showed you that side of himself, it was not in a battle, but rather in a more casual setting.

You had spoken to him, trying to understand him. You had asked him of what  _ dharma _ meant, what  _ adharma _ was, why his world moved as he did. He had answered everything with equal amounts of calm and candor, until you asked him of your mission.

Was it right, you’d asked, to deny others their chances to live their own lives, for the sake of your world ?

_ Living is to entail violence — walking is stepping on small creatures, _ he had responded.  _ But having doubts here is not the proper course of karma. _

You hadn’t been prepared for how utterly detached he was. Scathach-Skadi had run herself into the ground on fumes alone, fighting to just  _ maybe _ hope her world could survive. Patxi had sacrificed himself for your selfish world, your world where not just the strong deserved to live. Even Qin Shi Huang had seen that your world should have persisted.

But the Yuga Kshetra had been an era of peace, if led unto destruction by the machinations of a devilish puppeteer. You still remember Asha’s tears, the loss of her family — her father and dog left, and then, not even them.

_ It is the result of karma, that even gods must follow — not even we can run from destiny, _ the Berserker had replied.  _ Are you so conflicted still, after destroying four timelines for your own ? _

You could only respond that it felt like blood accumulated on your palms each time you set foot in a Lostbelt, each time you battled not to save a world but to destroy it.

_ If you hesitate now, evil already has your heart in its clutches _ , he says, something changing in his eyes.  _ Halting now, displaying indecision...that is a direct violation of karma and your dharma — to reclaim your world. _

Something dangerous rises in his voice.

_ If you violate dharma, that would be evil, Master. _

You only nod and tell him you understand, feeling both uneasy and relieved at once — like teetering on a precipice and only just stablising yourself. 

It is only later, you wonder: did he not care, that lives were taken, or had he simply rid himself of unnecessary,  _ human _ grief ?

Just another question you have no idea of the answer to.

  
  


Why had it not fallen into place ? Why hadn’t you realised that he viewed elimination of evil as paramount to your own missive ? The only reason why 

Maybe it was because you still longed to believe in the inherent goodness. Again, you forgot that such was exclusive to humans.

  
  
  


The last time you saw that side, at least, so far, was when you came to his room and asked him questions. You hadn’t spoken to him for a long while since — your attentions had gone to his Archer counterpart.

“Kiritin,” you’d asked, measuring your words like one measures precise anointments to offer to their god, “who are you ?”

His answer had been the last nail in the coffin, so to speak — the climax of your understanding that God was not a man, and therefore the ways in which men can be appealed to or their actions rationalised do not apply to gods.

“I am your Servant, Master. Kiritin, prince Arjuna of the shining diadem.” he’d responded, with instant clarity. “A sword for you to wield.”

He had turned, and his teeth had gleamed like long demon’s fangs, like beautiful bullets, like a white hot flame in the moments before it sears you to the bone.

“But don’t forget — this blade is also pointed at you.” 

  
Suddenly, the sclera of his eyes were too white, too pale, too stark against the shadows that fell on his face from his fringe. The contours of his complexion were sharper, harder, darker. You had wondered if this was what someone about to receive divine punishment saw in their final moments.

He smiled, but even the smile on his usually innocent features was like a sharpened dart, ready to pierce your heart if you so much as wavered from the perfect  _ dharma _ he demands.

“As long as you don’t succumb to evil, you have nothing to fear.”

You didn’t fail to take note of the invisible message hanging in the air. Perhaps the dots finally connected — perhaps you finally saw what you dealt with.

_ Yield even once to the embrace of evil, and I will take your head. _

  
  



End file.
